Woolson Constance Fenimore
Anne: A Novel

CHAPTER XXX

"O eloquent and mightie Death! thou hast drawn together all the farre-stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of men, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!"

– Sir Walter Raleigh.

A month passed. Anne saw nothing more, heard nothing more, but toiled on in her daily round. She taught and sang. She answered Miss Lois's letters and those of Père Michaux. There was no longer any danger in writing to Weston, and she smiled sadly as she thought of the blind, self-important days when she had believed otherwise. She now wrote to her friends there, and letters came in return. Mrs. Barstow's pages were filled with accounts of hospital work, for Donelson had been followed by the great blood-shedding of Shiloh, and the West was dotted with battle-fields.

She had allowed herself no newspapers, lest she should come upon his name. But now she ordered one, and read it daily. What was it to her even if she should come upon his name? She must learn to bear it, so long as they trod the same earth. And one day she did come upon it; but it was merely the two-line announcement that he had returned to the front.

The great city had grown used to the war. There were few signs in its busy streets that a pall hung over the borders of the South. The music teacher on her rounds saw nothing save now and then the ranks of a regiment passing through on its way to a train. Traffic went on unchanged; pleasure was rampant as ever. The shrill voice of the newsboy calling the details of the last battle was often the only reminder of the dread reality. May moved onward. The Scheffels began to make those little excursions into the country so dear to the German heart; but they could not persuade the honored Fräulein to accompany them. For it was not the real country to which they went, but only that suburban imitation of it which thrives in the neighborhood of New York, and Anne's heart was back on her island in the cool blue Northern straits. Miss Lois was now at home again, and her letters were like a breath of life to the homesick girl. Little André was better, and Père Michaux came often to the church-house, and seemed glad to be with them again. With them again! If she could but be with them too! – stand on the heights among the beckoning larches, walk through the spicy aisles of the arbor vitæ, sit under the gray old pines, listening to the wash of the cool blue water below, at rest, afar, afar from all this weariness and sadness and pain!

During these days Stonewall Jackson was making one of his brilliant campaigns in the Valley, the Valley of Virginia, the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah. On the last morning in May, while reading the war news, Anne found in one corner a little list of dead. And there, in small letters, which grew to great size, and inscribed themselves on the walls of the room, one succeeding the other like a horrible dream, was the name, Ward Heathcote. "Captain Ward Heathcote, – New York Volunteers." She turned the sheet; it was repeated in the latest news column, and again in a notice on the local page. "Captain Ward Heathcote, – New York Volunteers, is reported among the slain," followed by those brief items of birth, age, and general history which appall our eyes when we first behold them on the printed page, and realize that they are now public property, since they belong only to the dead.

It was early. She was at home in the half-house. She rose, put on her bonnet and gloves, walked to the station, took the first train to the city, and went to Helen.

She reached the house, and was denied entrance. Mrs. Heathcote could see no one.

Was any one with her? Miss Teller?

Miss Teller, the man answered, was absent from the city; but a telegraphic dispatch had been sent, and she was on her way home. There was no relative at present with Mrs. Heathcote; friends she was not able to see. And he looked with some curiosity at this plainly dressed young person, who stood there quite unconscious, apparently, of the atmosphere of his manner. And yet Mr. Simpson had a very well regulated manner, founded upon the best models – a manner which had never heretofore failed in its effect. With a preliminary cough, he began to close the door.

"Wait," said this young person, almost as though she had some authority. She drew forth a little note-book, tore out a leaf, wrote a line upon it, and handed him the improvised card. "Please take this to Mrs. Heathcote," she said. "I think she will see me."

See her – see her– when already members of the highest circles of the city had been refused! With a slight smile of superior scorn, Simpson took the little slip, and leaving the stranger on the steps, went within, partially closing the door behind him. But in a few minutes he hastily returned, and with him was a sedate middle-aged woman, whom he called Mrs. Bagshot, and who, although quiet in manner, seemed decidedly to outrank him.

"Will you come with me, if you please?" she said deferentially, addressing Anne. "Mrs. Heathcote would like to see you without delay." She led the way with a quiet unhurrying step up a broad stairway, and opened a door. In the darkened room, on a couch, a white form was lying. Bagshot withdrew, and Anne, crossing the floor, sank down on her knees beside the couch.

"Helen!" she said, in a broken voice; "oh, Helen! Helen!"

The white figure did not stir, save slowly to disengage one hand and hold it out. But Anne, leaning forward, tenderly lifted the slight form in her arms, and held it close to her breast.

"I could not help coming," she said. "Poor Helen! poor, poor Helen!"

She smoothed the fair hair away from the small face that lay still and white upon her shoulder, and at that moment she pitied the stricken wife so intensely that she forgot the rival, or rather made herself one with her; for in death there is no rivalry, only a common grief. Helen did not speak, but she moved closer to Anne, and Anne, holding her in her arms, bent over her, soothing her with loving words, as though she had been a little child.

The stranger remained with Mrs. Heathcote nearly two hours. Then she went away, and Simpson, opening the door for her, noticed that her veil was closely drawn, so that her face was concealed. She went up the street to the end of the block, turned the corner, and disappeared. He was still standing on the steps, taking a breath of fresh air, his portly person and solemn face expressing, according to his idea, a dignified grief appropriate to the occasion and the distinction of the family he served – a family whose bereavements even were above the level of ordinary sorrows, when his attention was attracted by the appearance of a boy in uniform, bearing in his hand an orange-brown envelope. In the possibilities of that well-known hue of hope and dread he forgot for the moment even his occupation of arranging in his own mind elegant formulas with which to answer the inquiries constantly made at the door of the bereaved mansion. The boy ascended the steps; Bagshot, up stairs, with her hand on the knob of Mrs. Heathcote's door, saw him, and came down. The dispatch was for her mistress; she carried it to her. The next instant a cry rang through the house. Captain Heathcote was safe.

The message was as follows:

"To Mrs. Ward Heathcote:

"My name given in list a mistake. Am here, wounded, but not dangerously. Will write. W. H."

It was sent from Harper's Ferry. And two hours later, Mrs. Heathcote, accompanied by Bagshot, was on her way to Harper's Ferry.

It was a wild journey. If any man had possessed authority over Helen, she would never have been allowed to make it; but no man did possess authority. Mrs. Heathcote, having money, courage, and a will of steel, asked advice from no one, did not even wait for Miss Teller, but departed according to a swift purpose of her own, accompanied only by Bagshot, who was, however, an efficient person, self-possessed, calm, and accustomed to travelling. It was uncertain whether they would be able to reach Harper's Ferry, but this uncertainty did not deter Helen: she would go as far as she could. In her heart she was not without hope that Mrs. Heathcote could relax the rules and military lines of even the strictest general in the service. As to personal fear, she had none.

At Baltimore she was obliged to wait for an answer to the dispatch she had sent on starting, and the answer was long in coming. To pass away the time, she ordered a carriage and drove about the city; many persons noticed her, and remembered her fair, delicate, and impatient face, framed in its pale hair. At last the answer came. Captain Heathcote was no longer at Harper's Ferry; he had been sent a short distance northward to a town where there was a better hospital, and Mrs. Heathcote was advised to go round by the way of Harrisburg, a route easier and safer, if not in the end more direct as well.

She followed this advice, although against her will. She travelled northward to Harrisburg, and then made a broad curve, and came southward again, within sight of the green hills later to be brought into unexpected and long-enduring fame – the hills around Gettysburg. But now the whole region was fair with summer, smiling and peaceful; the farmers were at work, and the grain was growing. After some delays she reached the little town, with its barrack-like, white-washed hospital, where her husband was installed under treatment for a wound in his right arm, which, at first appearing serious, had now begun to improve so rapidly that the surgeon in charge decided that he could soon travel northward, and receive what further care he needed among the comforts of his own home.

At the end of five days, therefore, they started, attended only by Bagshot, that useful woman possessing, in addition to her other qualifications, both skill and experience as a nurse.

They started; but the journey was soon ended. On the 11th of June the world of New York was startled, its upper circles hotly excited, and one obscure young teacher in a little suburban home paralyzed, by the great headings in the morning newspapers. Mrs. Heathcote, wife of Captain Ward Heathcote, – New York Volunteers, while on her way homeward with her husband, who was wounded in the Shenandoah Valley, had been found murdered in her room in the country inn at Timloesville, where they were passing the night. And the evidence pointed so strongly toward Captain Heathcote that he had been arrested upon suspicion.

The city journals appended to this brief dispatch whatever details they knew regarding the personal history of the suspected man and his victim. Helen's beauty, the high position of both in society, and their large circle of friends were spoken of; and in one account the wife's wealth, left by will unconditionally to her husband, was significantly mentioned. One of the larger journals, with the terrible and pitiless impartiality of the great city dailies, added that if there had been a plan, some part of it had signally failed. "A man of the ability of Captain Heathcote would never have been caught otherwise in a web of circumstantial evidence so close that it convinced even the pastoral minds of the Timloesville officials. We do not wish, of course, to prejudge this case; but from the half-accounts which have reached us, it looks as though this blunder, whatever it may have been, was but another proof of the eternal verity of the old saying, Murder will out."

It was the journal containing this sentence which Anne read. She had heard the news of Heathcote's safety a few hours after her visit to Helen. Only a few days had passed, and now her eyes were staring at the horrible words that Helen was dead, and that her murderer was her own husband.

CHAPTER XXXI

 
"All her bright hair streaming down,
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled."
 

– Tennyson.

EXTRACT FROM THE NEW YORK "MARS."

"The following details in relation to the terrible crime with whose main facts our readers are familiar will be of interest at the moment. They were collected by our special reporter, sent in person to the scene of the tragedy, for the purpose of gathering reliable information concerning this case, which promises to be one of the causes célèbres of the country, not only on account of the high position and wealth of the parties concerned, but also on account of the close net of purely circumstantial evidence which surrounds the accused man.

"TIMLOESVILLE

is a small village on the border-line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Legally in Pennsylvania, it possesses personally the characteristics of a Maryland village, some of its outlying fields being fairly over the border. It is credited with about two thousand inhabitants; but the present observer did not see, during his stay, more than about one thousand, including women and children. Timloesville is on a branch railway, which connects with the main line at a junction about thirty miles distant. It possesses two churches and a saw-mill, and was named from a highly esteemed early settler (who may perhaps have marched with our great Washington), Judge Jeremiah Timloe. The agricultural products of the surrounding country are principally hay and maize – wrongly called corn. The intelligence and morality of the community are generally understood to be of a high order. A low fever prevails here in the spring.

"TIMLOE HOTEL

"At the southern edge of the town, on the line of the railway, stands the Timloe Hotel, presenting an imposing façade to the passengers on the trains as they roll by. It is presided over in a highly liberal and gentlemanly manner by Mr. Casper Graub; it is, in fact, to the genial courtesy of 'mine host' that much of this information is due, and we take this occasion also to state that during all the confusion and excitement necessarily accruing to his house during the present week, the high standard of Mr. Graub's table has never once been relaxed.

"MR. GRAUB'S STORY

"An army officer, with his right arm in a sling, arrived at the Timloe Hotel, accompanied by his wife, and a maid or nurse named Bagshot, on the evening of June 10, at six o'clock precisely. The officer registered the names as follows: 'Ward Heathcote, Mrs. Heathcote and maid, New York.' He wrote the names with his left hand. A room was assigned to them in the front part of the house, but upon the lady's objecting to the proximity of the trains (generally considered, however, by the majority of Mr. Graub's guests, an enjoyable variety), another apartment in a wing was given to them, with windows opening upon the garden. The wing is shaped like an L. The maid, Bagshot, had a room in the bend of the L, she too having objected, although later, to the room first assigned to her. At half past six o'clock they had supper; the lady then retired to her room, but the husband went out, as he said, to stroll about the town. At half past eight he returned. At nine, Bagshot, having been dismissed for the night, went to her own room; when she left, Captain Heathcote was reading a newspaper, and his wife was writing. It has since been ascertained that this newspaper was the Baltimore Chronos of the 9th inst. At ten o'clock exactly Captain Heathcote came down stairs a second time, passed through the office, and stopped to light a cigar. Mr. Graub noticed that he was able to use his left hand quite cleverly, and asked him whether he was naturally left-handed; Captain Heathcote answered that he was not, but had learned the use only since his right arm had been disabled. Mr. Graub, seeing him go toward the door, thought that it was somewhat singular that he should wish to take a second walk, and casually remarked upon the warmth of the evening. Captain Heathcote replied that it was for that very reason he was going out; he could not breathe in the house; and he added something not very complimentary to the air (generally considered unusually salubrious) of Timloesville. Mr. Graub noticed that he walked up and down on the piazza once or twice, as if he wished to show himself plainly to the persons who were sitting there. He then strolled away, going toward the main street.

"THE OUTSIDE STAIRWAY

"As before mentioned, the second room given to Mrs. Heathcote was in a wing. This wing is not much used; in fact, at the time, save this party of three, it had no occupants. It is in the old part of the house. A piazza or gallery runs across a portion of the second story, to which access is had from the garden by a flight of wooden steps, or rather an outside stairway. This stairway is old and sagged; in places the railing is gone. It is probable that Mrs. Heathcote did not even see it. But Captain Heathcote might have noticed it, and probably did notice it, from the next street, through which he passed when he took his first walk before dark.

"MRS. BAGSHOT'S TESTIMONY

"As we have seen, Captain Heathcote left the hotel ostentatiously by the front entrance at ten o'clock. At eleven, Mrs. Bagshot, who happened to be looking from her window in the bend of the L, distinctly saw him (her candle being out) stealing up by the outside stairway in the only minute of moonlight there was during the entire evening, the clouds having suddenly and strangely parted, as if for that very purpose. She saw him enter his wife's room through one of the long windows which opened to the floor. In about a quarter of an hour she saw him come forth again, close the blind behind him, and begin to descend the stairway. As there was no longer any moonlight, she could only distinguish him by the light that shone from the room; but in that short space of time, while he was closing the blind, she recognized him beyond the possibility of a doubt.

"THE NIGHT PORTER'S TALE

"A little before midnight, all the hotel entrances being closed save the main door, Captain Heathcote returned. As he passed through the office, the night porter noticed that he looked pale, and that his clothes were disordered; his shirt cuffs especially were wet and creased, as though they had been dipped in water. He went up stairs to his room, but soon came down again. He had knocked, but could not awaken his wife. Would the porter be able to open the door by turning back the key? His wife was an invalid; he feared she had fainted.

"THE TRAGEDY

"The night porter – a most respectable person of Irish extraction, named Dennis Haggerty – came up and opened the door. The lamp was burning within; the blinds of the window were closed. On the bed, stabbed to the heart, apparently while she lay asleep, was the body of the wife.

"DUMB WITNESSES

"Red marks were found on the shutter, which are pronounced by experts to be the partial print of a left hand. On the white cloth which covered the bureau is a slight impression of finger-tips, also belonging to a left hand. These marks are too imperfect to be relied upon in themselves, save that they establish the fact that the hand which touched the cloth and closed the shutter was a left hand.

"AN IMPROBABLE STORY

"Captain Heathcote asserts that he left the hotel at ten, as testified, to smoke a cigar and get a breath of fresh air. That he returned through the garden at eleven, and seeing by the bright light that his wife was still awake, he went up by the outside stairway, which he had previously noted, entered the room through the long window to tell her that he was going to take a bath in the river, and to get towels. He remained a few minutes, put two towels in his pocket, and came out, going down the same stairway, across the garden, and along the main road to the river. (A track, however, has been found to the river through the large meadow behind the house.) At the bend where road and river meet, he undressed himself and took a bath. The disorder in his clothing and his wet cuffs came from his own awkwardness, as he has but partial use of his right arm. He then returned by the road as he had come, but he forgot the towels. Probably they would be found on the bank where he left them.

"THE TOWEL

"No towels were found at the point named. But at the end of the track through the grass meadow, among the reeds on the shore, a towel was found, and identified as one belonging to the hotel. This towel is stained with blood.

"THE THEORY

"The theory at Timloesville is that Heathcote had no idea that he would be seen when he stole up that outside stairway. He knew that the entire wing was unoccupied: a servant has testified that she told him it was; and he thought, too, that the maid Bagshot had a room in front, not commanding the garden. Bagshot says that the room was changed without his knowledge, while he was absent on his first walk. He supposed, then, that he would not be seen. He evidently took Mrs. Heathcote's diamond rings, purse, and watch (they are all missing) in order to turn public opinion toward the idea that the murder was for the sake of robbery. He says that a man passed him while he was bathing, and spoke to him; proof of this would establish something toward the truth of his story. But, strangely enough, this man can not be found. Yet Timloesville and its neighborhood are by no means so crowded with inhabitants that the search should be a difficult one.

"It may be regarded as a direct misfortune in the cause of justice that the accused heard any of Bagshot's testimony against him before he was called upon to give his own account of the events of the evening. And yet his confused, contradictory story is another proof of the incapacity which the most cunning murderers often display when overtaken by suspicion; they seem to lose all power to protect themselves. If Captain Heathcote had denied Bagshot's testimony in toto, had denied having ascended the outside stairway at all, his chances would have been much brighter, for people might have believed that the maid was mistaken. But he acknowledges the stairway, and then denies the rest.

"HIS MOTIVE

"But how can poor finite man detect so obscure a thing as motive? He must hide his face and acknowledge his feebleness when he stands before this inscrutable, heavy-browed, silent Fate. In this case, two solutions are offered. One, that the wife's large fortune was left by will unconditionally to her husband; the other, that Mrs. Bagshot will testify that there was jealousy and ill feeling between these two, linked together by God's holy ordinance, and that this ill feeling was connected with a third person, and that person – a woman."

EXTRACT FROM THE NEW YORK "ZEUS."

"Mrs. Heathcote was apparently murdered while asleep. When found, her face wore a natural and sweet expression, as though she had passed from slumber into death without even a sigh. The maid testifies that her mistress always removed her rings at night; it is probable, therefore, that they, together with her purse and watch, were on the bureau where the marks of the finger-tips were found.

"We refrain at present from comment upon the close circumstantial evidence which surrounds this case; the strong hand of the law will take hold of it at the proper time, and sift it thoroughly. Meanwhile the attitude of all right-minded persons should be calm and impartial, and the accused man should be held innocent until he is proven guilty. Trial by newspaper is one of the notable evils of our modern American system, and should be systematically discountenanced and discouraged; when a human life is trembling in the balance, the sensation-monger should be silenced, and his evil wares sternly rejected."

This negative impartiality was the nearest approach to friendliness which the accused man received from the combined newspaper columns of New York, Baltimore, and Washington.

The body of poor Helen was brought home, and Miss Teller herself arrayed her darling for her long repose. Friends thronged to see her as she lay in her luxurious drawing-room; flowers were placed everywhere as though for a bridal – the bridal of death. Her figure was visible from head to foot; she seemed asleep. Her still face wore a gentle expression of rest and peace; her small hands were crossed upon her breast; her unbound hair fell in waves behind her shoulders, a few strands lying on the white skirt far below the slender waist, almost to the feet. The long lashes lay upon the oval cheek; no one would ever see those bright brown eyes again, and find fault with them because they were too narrow. The lithe form was motionless; no one would ever again watch it move onward with its peculiar swaying grace, and find fault with it because it was too slender. Those who had not been willing to grant her beauty in life, gazed at her now with tear-dimmed eyes, and willingly gave all the meed of praise they had withheld before. Those who had not loved her while she lived, forgot all, and burst into tears when they saw her now, the delicately featured face once so proud and imperious, quiet forever, grown strangely youthful too, like the face of a young girl.

Miss Teller sat beside her darling; to all she made the same set speech: "Dear Ward, her husband, the one who loved her best, can not be here. I am staying with her, therefore, until she is taken from us; then I shall go to him, as she would have wished." For Miss Teller believed no word of the stories with which the newspapers teemed. Indignation and strong affection supplied the place of whatever strength had been lacking in her character, and never before in her life had she appeared as resolute and clear-minded as now.

During the funeral services, Isabel Varce sat beside Miss Teller, sobbing as if her heart would break. Rachel Bannert was next to Isabel. She had looked once at Helen, only once, and her dark face had quivered spasmodically; then she also took her seat beside the fair, still form, and bowed her head. All Helen's companions were clad in mourning garb; the tragedy of this death had invested it with a deeper sadness than belonged to the passing away in the ordinary course of nature of even closer friends. The old-fashioned mansion was full to overflowing; in the halls and doorway, on the front steps, and even on the pavement outside, men were standing, bare-headed and silent, many distinguished faces being among them; society men also, who in general avoided funerals as unpleasant and grewsome ceremonials. These had been Helen's companions and friends; they had all liked and admired her, and as she was borne past them, covered with heliotrope, there was not one whose eyes did not grow stern in thinking of the dastard hand that did the cruel deed.

That night, when darkness fell, many hearts remembered her, lying alone in the far-off cemetery, the cemetery we call Greenwood, although no wood made by Nature's hand alone bears the cold white marble flowers which are found on those fair slopes. And when the next morning dawned, with dull gray clouds and rain, there were many who could not help thinking of the beautiful form which had fared softly and delicately all its life, which had felt only the touch of finest linen and softest silk, which had never suffered from the cold or the storm, now lying there alone in the dark soaked earth, with the rain falling upon its defenseless head, and no one near to replace the wet lilies which the wind had blown from the mound.

But those who were thinking thus were mistaken: some one was near. A girl clad in black and closely veiled stood beside the new-made grave, with tears dropping on her cheeks, and her hand pressed over her heart. There were many mourners yesterday; there was but one to-day. There were many flowers then; now there was only the bunch of violets which this girl had brought. She had knelt beside the mound, her head undefended from the rain, and had prayed silently. Then she had risen, but still she could not go. She paced slowly up and down beside the grave, like a sentinel keeping watch; only when she perceived that one of the men employed in the cemetery was watching her curiously, no doubt wondering why she remained there in the storm, did she turn away at last, and go homeward again by the long route she had traversed in coming.

For Anne had not dared to go to the funeral; had not dared to go to Miss Teller. The hideous sentence in the newspaper had filled her with doubt and vague alarm. It was not possible that she, Anne, was meant; and yet Bagshot, from whom this as yet unrevealed testimony was to come, saw her on the day she visited Helen, after the tidings of her husband's death. Surely this was too slight a foundation upon which to found her vague alarm. She repeated to herself that her dread was unreasonable, yet it would not down. If the danger had been open, she could have faced and defied it; but this mute, unknown something, which was only to be revealed by the power and in the presence of the law, held her back, bound hand and foot, afraid almost to breathe. For her presence or words might, in some way she could not foresee or even comprehend, bring increased danger upon the head of the accused man, already weighted down with a crushing load of suspicion, which grew heavier every hour.

Suspense supplies a calmness of its own. Anne went into the city as usual, gave her lessons, and went through all the forms of her accustomed living, both at home and abroad. Yet all the time she was accompanied by a muffled shape, its ghostly eyes fixed upon her through its dark veil, menacing but silent. It was dread.

When the hour came, and she knew that the old words were being spoken over Helen: "In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succor but of Thee?" "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art God from everlasting." "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing that is past as a watch in the night." "And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly my hope is even in Thee" – she bowed her head and joined in the sentences mutely, present at least in spirit. The next day, while the rain fell sombrely, she went to the distant cemetery: no one would be there in the storm, and she wished to stand once more by Helen's side – poor Helen, beautiful Helen, taken from this life's errors forever, perhaps already, in another world, understanding all, repentant for all, forgiving all.